When the then president of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, ordered the opening of an investigation for a possible impeachment
of
the president of the United States, Joe Biden, he highlighted that a “trusted FBI informant” had “alleged a bribe to the Biden family.”
Last week it was learned that that informant was Alexander Smirnov, 43 years old, and that what he said was a lie.
The prosecutor accuses him of false testimony and fabricating evidence for political reasons.
Despite the puncture in the evidence against the president, the Republicans do not give up.
They will continue to harass the president and his son Hunter Biden as long as they believe it suits their interests.
The FD-1023 is a form used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to collect information from a confidential human source.
In the United States Capitol, there has been non-stop talk for months about a specific FD-1023, a four-page form.
In it, a source, now known to be Smirnov, told the FBI that Joe Biden and his son Hunter had received commissions of five million dollars in 2015 or 2016 from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, paid by the co-founder of the company Mykola Zlochevsky.
The interview with that source occurred as part of an ongoing investigation into complaints filed in 2020 by Rudy Giuliani, lawyer for then-President Donald Trump.
The Republican wanted to undermine the prestige of his probable rival in that year's presidential election.
Nothing supported the credibility of those complaints and when Giuliani himself found direct testimonies that contradicted them, he asked to “bury” them.
Paradoxically, the Republican obsession with Hunter Biden's business dealings in Ukraine and how his father could have benefited from it led to Trump's first
impeachment
for his pressure on the government of the then unknown Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate and incriminate the Bidens, threatening to withdraw aid to the country otherwise.
The FBI itself had tried to clarify that collecting information from a source on a form does not validate it or establish its credibility.
Even so, Biden's rivals insisted again and again on that FD-1023 document.
In it, Smirnov also claimed to have text messages and up to 17 recordings, which made the Republicans salivate.
The obsession with impeachment
A large number of congressmen from Trump's party are obsessed with impeaching Biden
.
They do not forgive that the previous president was politically impeached twice.
Since they won the majority in the House of Representatives more than a year ago, they have been endlessly searching for any evidence to accuse Biden of corruption.
They saw the president's weakness in his son, Hunter Biden.
Obviously, they couldn't accuse the father of the son's addictions, tax and legal problems (he is charged in two different cases), so what it was about was proving that Joe Biden benefited from Hunter's foreign businesses. , as they have been trying to do for years, but now with the power of the majority of the lower house.
This, despite the fact that they have not found any significant evidence against the president and that the acts being investigated occurred before he occupied his current position.
Smirnov's indictment for false testimony punctures the corruption accusations against Biden and further weakens Republican arguments.
“Special counsel David Weiss [who was appointed by former President Donald Trump] has shown how the key evidence at the heart of the
House Republicans'
impeachment
investigation is based on a lie,” said Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, it's a statement.
“Special Counsel Weiss's investigation is just the latest to debunk the Ukraine-Burisma conspiracy theory at the heart of this fraudulent
impeachment investigation,”
he added.
Biden himself said this Friday at the White House that the investigation “should be abandoned.”
“It has been a shameful endeavor from the beginning,” he added.
Republicans, however, now say that the famous form was not so important.
“We have over 30 million reasons to continue this investigation and none of those reasons are based on the corrupt FBI or an informant.
Bank records don't lie,” Republican Congressman James Comer tweeted.
The bank records he was referring to seem like another piece of false, or at least misleading, evidence.
After requests and subpoenas, the Republicans found a check for $200,000 from James Biden, Joe Biden's brother, to the president and made a big fuss about it, but without clarifying that it was identified as the repayment of a loan and hiding that there had been a move from the president to his brother of the same amount just two months earlier.
These were also transactions from 2018, when Biden was neither vice president nor president, made transparently, without the slightest intention of hiding them and without any indication of irregularity.
Republicans also found three company payments of $1,380 each, also in 2018, from a Hunter Biden company to his father and wanted to make it appear as a way to get money from China to the president.
In reality, there were three installments of the purchase of a Ford Raptor van.
Joe Biden had requested credit in his name as a favor to his son.
Like those, almost every new big revelation from the Republicans evaporates as soon as it hits the light and is examined with a magnifying glass.
The White House has dismantled the accusations and the most that investigations have been able to demonstrate is that the now president, when he was Barack Obama's vice president, once said hello on the phone and attended a dinner with Hunter's associates or clients.
The evidence seems to matter less than the political impact.
Investigating Biden is a way to counter the criminal accusations against Trump.
Republicans have already given signs that they will try to maintain pressure on Biden, extend their investigations to the handling of classified documents (despite the legal exoneration) and seek arguments to request
impeachment
.
It remains to be seen whether they take that step, but the final decision will not depend so much on the evidence as on whether the Republicans see themselves as having a majority for it (the moderates could distance themselves) and on what they believe the consequences will be in an election year.
The investigation continues and next week one of its highlights will arrive.
After several scuffles, disagreements and some theatrics, Hunter Biden is summoned to testify behind closed doors in Congress on February 28.
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